"Roll Over Beethoven"

This beautiful 17-inch-wide single Venetian cutway, thinline archtop guitar weighs just 6.20 lbs. Book-matched highly-flamed laminated maple top, laminated maple back (also highly flamed) and sides. Two-piece flamed maple neck with center mahogany strip with that wonderful thick '59 profile, a nut width of just over 1 5/8 inches and a short scale length of 23 1/2 inches. Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 22 original jumbo frets and inlaid pearl split-parallelogram position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo and pearl crown inlay. Two-layer (black on white) plastic truss-rod cover with two screws. Orange oval label inside the bass f-hole, the model "ES-350T" in black ink and the serial number "A 30399" is stamped in black. Inside the treble f-hole the FON (factory order number) is stamped in black "S 9292 12". The body is triple-bound on the top and back, the f-holes are single-bound, the headstock and fretboard are single-bound. Individual single-line Kluson Deluxe tuners with single-ring Keystone plastic buttons (stamped on the iunderside "2356766 / Pat Appld."). Two original PAF pickups with rectangular black labels on the underside and outputs of 7.94k and 7.36k. Black plastic pickup rings stamped on the underside "MR 491 / M-69 7" and MR 490 / M-69 8" respectively. Five-layer (black/white/black/white/black) plastic pickguard. Four controls (two volume, two tone) on lower treble bout plus three-way selector switch on treble horn. Gold plastic bell-shaped "Bell" knobs. ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic non-retainer bridge with metal saddles on rosewood base and specific wire-loop tailpiece with "ES-350" on cross-bar. All hardware gold-plated. Apart from some minor tarnishing to the gold-plated hardware, some very minimal finish checking and some minimal playing wear to the original frets, this guitar, in excellent plus (9.25) condition, is one of the prettiest examples of these wonderful '50s Rock'n'Roll specials that we have ever seen. The top, back and neck display remarkable flame. When we took this guitar apart we noticed three very small additional screw-holes on the base (under the tailpiece hinge) which suggested that at some time a Bigsby had been on this guitar. Upon very close examination of the top under ultra-violet light we noticed the very feint shadow of a 'horse-shoe' Bigsby which must have been on the guitar for only a very short period of time, as this is quite invisible to the 'naked eye'. With all that said, this is still the best example of a '59 blond ES-350 that we have ever seen! Housed in its original Gibson 'five-latch' brown hardshell case with pink plush lining (8.50)

Gibson produced just 285 Natural ES-350Ts between 1955 and 1962, but this, the preferable "PAF" version did not appear until 1957, and only 57 were made in 1959.

Introduced in 1955, the ES-350T (with two P-90 pickups) featured the overall characteristics of the Byrdland, especially with respect to the body and neck dimensions. But it differed in a number of details that were borrowed from the earlier ES-350 (no "T") that it was replacing in the Gibson line. The body was entirely made of curly maple without a solid spruce top, and the bound fingerboard was of rosewood instead of ebony, and featured split parallelogram inlays. It lacked the black and white purfling of the Byrdland, and the tailpiece, though having a loop design vaguely resembling a "W" was in fact quite different, with the "ES-350T" name engraved in the upper part. When introduced in 1955 the price was a modest $395.00 compared to the very expensive $550.00 Byrdland. Chuck Berry played an ES-350T in the mid to late fifties, while Steve Cropper played a Byrdland in the early days of the Mar-Keys.